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Of course, when you get all done, you’ve just succeeded in checking into the system as someone else who just happens to be you.  I don’t think that accomplishes much.  Alternatively, you can become a foreigner living here.  But a special kind of foreigner if you don’t want to play the visa game.  You’ve got to be a foreigner who was born here!  Does that happen?  Very often. How?  Say your parents moved here from Ecuador.  They were naturalized.  You have a U.S. birth certificate.  You’re a dual national.  Or your father or grandfather was born in Italy.  Or some other country and foreign citizenship is yours for the claiming.  But say your parents are not foreign nationals.  What if you did a legal name change using a real good attorney who followed up the name change with a court ordered re-issue of your birth certificate in your new name.  This is tough, but it can be done anywhere if you are persistent.  The reason you give for the re-issue of the birth certificate with your new name is always “to return to your original family name” or “to honor your adoptive (or foster) parents” and because having a birth certificate different from all your other details, including your travel documents, always causes problems, even if the court order changing the name is attached.  So your challenge is to shop for an attorney who will quote you a price on not just a name change, but who guarantees he can get a court order to re-issue a birth certificate in your new name. Are there other birth certificate tricks?  Tons.  What is the one thing you never want to do with a funny birth certificate?  Apply for a social security number or a passport.  The only purpose a birth certificate from your home country is for is so you can’t get deported. When you succeed, you will have a new U.S. birth certificate with a new name, or even your old birth certificate with a court ordered name change attached.  No social security number.  No nothing.  Now you purchase a citizenship (by naturalization, not rebirth) for $16,000 to $45,000 that suits your needs and may have other attractive qualities to it.  Such as visa free travel to many places.  You are now a naturalized citizen of, say, Grenada, and have a U.S. birth certificate in a name other than you were born with and other than everyone knows you.  Can your birth country deport you for overstaying your visa?  Of course not!  You’re a citizen!  Can you open a bank account that is off the books?  Yes!  As a foreigner!  It is “legal” to do that.  I’m not sure anyone knows.  As a resident citizen do you have a duty to report it?  No unless you get income from it.  So, don’t get an interest bearing account.  One’s own country is often a great tax haven if you’re not a citizen.  Does the bank know you’re a citizen.   Your foreign passport and your, what?   Your international driving permit!  After that, you’re off and running.

AJC delle Marche is better known as the Stealth Expat - He is very adept at attaining second passports for his clients In addition to 'front door' citizenship programs he is also able to get passports under difficult circumstances by way of his contacts with government officials in various countries. Officials who are willing to listen to reasonable proposals. delle Marche is relocating his offices to the offshore banking district of Panama and will soon be available for personal consultation.

        Is life easier in a country if you check in?  Yes.  Is it cheaper if you check in?  Yes, in the short run, if you don’t count the cost in taxes and regulations that apply only to citizens. But here comes one of the delle Marche Rules  Privacy is directly proportional to cost or extra trouble.  Or the corollary  cheap and easy almost always means transparent.  Do you use a mail drop, even a foreign box to have things re-mailed to you!  Of course!  Is there an added cost?  Yes.  So, keep track of these added costs and inconveniences and compare them to the cost (including loss of sovereignty) and conveniences of living on the books.

        Can the taxing authorities find you.  Maybe -- if you divorce and your spouse tells them.  But who else will?  If you work off the books and don’t live too conspicuously, who’s gonna know?  If you run a company, then the foreigner has taxes withheld at source from his dividends.  He never has to files a return.  What if you’re caught?  Well, the good news is that the government probably owes you money!  If you make money as capital gains (as in mutual funds), there are games you can play, legally, where there is no withholding.  Think about that as you explore stock market growth.  It’s like making another 20% a year.

        There is yet another spin on this if you want to check out and still live in your home country and you have substantial assets.  Put them in tax-free municipal bonds.  Own them as your new foreign persona.  If you ever get “caught” by the IRS and they determine you are really a resident, what do you owe?  Nothing.  What are the penalties.  None. Is there criminality?  No.  The first test of criminality is that you must actually owe tax.  If your income derives from tax free munies, you don’t owe anything to either state or federal authorities.  So failing to report it is irregular, but not criminal.

        It is my understanding that the same kind of strategy can work for our Canadian friends.  Revenue Canada is getting more and more aggressive and, like the U.S. Internal Revenue, is attacking tax avoidance schemes wherever they can find them.  Yet there are places in Canada that are, perhaps, some of the most beautiful places in the universe.  So let’s look what happens if a Canadian purchases a citizenship that is visa free to Canada.  But before he does, he changes his name.  In Canada, if the name change is by court order, you can submit the order to the Provincial Vital Statistics bureau, and they will issue you a new birth certificate (get both sizes and a few sets of originals) with your new name.

        Canada, however, is as “on-line/real-time” as about any country in the universe.  Everything is cross-linked with every agency.  And all that wonderful socialized health care may be hard to give up.  Of course, many Canadians complain that it doesn’t work.

But what about a bit of cultural exchange?  If a Canadian comes here and a U.S. citizen goes there, both have just moved a few miles, no-duty on import of stuff for “vacation/seasonal” purposes, easy, no quarantine of pets and animals, and there they are in a foreign country amazingly culturally similar to each other.  And some pleasant differences.  Each are out of the other’s system.  The Canadian moves to San Francisco or New York and the U.S citizen moves to Victoria or Toronto.  Each will feel at home. 
Neither will officially be there. 

      Can the Canadian fund his U.S. activities from U.S. tax free munies so that if he’s ever found to be a resident for tax purposes he owes no tax?  Yes!  Are there other schemes for U.S. citizens moving to Canada?  Yes!  Can each visit the other using ATM machines.  Yes.  Are there some taxation technicalities that it would be good to put in order?  Yes. But where there’s a will there’s a way.

        Can a first world citizen disappear into Europe and live someplace permanently without running afoul of the law?  Sure.  Been done for years.  PT-ing is the safest method, but I wouldn’t hesitate a moment in QT-ing it myself.  I’d take a few pre-cautions.  Luciano Pavoratti just got in trouble with the Italian taxing authorities because he claimed he was a permanent resident of Monaco  a tax haven on the Mediterranean.  But he lived most of the time at his estate in Moderna on the Adriatic.  He was pursued because the Italian government can’t chase everyone and everyone cheats, so they use the high profile prosecution technique to encourage compliance.  Same tactic the U.S. IRS uses  except they’re equally happy to grind up little people, too.  The grass roots prosecution technique.  Interesting enough, if Pavarotti wasn’t Italian, he could have pulled it off.  If I were going to live in Italy, it wouldn’t be as an Italian.  If I were Italian, I’d pop down the coast to France or Spain.  Or, like Pavarotti, I’d pick a place like Malta to HQ and get official residency.  Not a pure tax haven.  But the personal income tax maxes out at something like U.S.$2700.  Then I’d visit Italy for six months (just less) a year.  Or, spend $1200 a year for an annual residence permit in the Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean.  Get a driver’s license, address, etc.  If any one asks, that’s where you permanently reside  a domicile  in technical terms.  TCI (Turks Caicos Islands) has no estate tax so it’s a great place to be domiciled.  So now your IBC or trust is renting or buying a villa (a villa being something the size of your guest house stacked on top of the next villa).  Or it has bought a Spanish farm.  Since your tax rate is going to approach zip, zed, zero, you can afford to be magnanimous.  Your IBC can lease the farm to your farm business which, hopefully, hired people to run the farm and fills out all the proper returns with your name no where to be seen.  Your mail comes to the farm.  You get it.  Just think a couple steps ahead.  Then you play the “90 day hop” (4 times a year cross the nearest border, stay over night to get a hotel receipt) and return home with the right to live there for 90 days. Visa stamps would be nice, but they’re no longer in vogue.  You’ve got to beg for one for souvenir purposes.  Begging four times a year is good for the soul.  Actually, you beg every other trip so that it shows that you’ve actually been gone a long time. 

        Since PT-ing requires (if done according to the rules) a number of residences  usually three (or two if you vacation for a month somewhere else) in order to technically live in each country less than the time necessary to trigger taxation.  This is fine if one is without children, but a few years of this will be worse than raising a family with the military who is always on the move.  In later years, the kids are gone and you can do what you want. However, by that time, if you have traveled during your good years, the allure of travel has waned due to emotional maturation or declining health.  A home base seems real good.  As one ages and accumulates assets, the last thing anyone wants is to go mano a mano with a taxing authority as they round up your assets.  To appease the Republican beast that emerges in our dotage or when we actually have something to lose, two things are necessary  competent estate planning, asset protection, and a life style that doesn’t attract attention as full of conspicuous consumption.  If you’ve got to live in 10,000 sqft (1111 sm) houses with Rolls Royces in the drive and you strive to advance in conspicuous business or politics, then you’re better off biting the bullet and checking into the system.  For those of us who’d like a simple and free life, then the Japanese concept of shibumi is helpful.  Understated, humble elegance.  When you need to strut you stuff  take in on the road. 

        In closing, the peripatetic life of PT can be successfully modified to a life of QT if structured property.  It’s a bit more complicated than PT-ing it, but it does have it’s own rewards and is more suitable for families or seniors.  As many of my readers know, I am available and I’d be happy to hear about your successes or failures of living in a fixed abode on the QT.   I’ll pass on the hints to other readers.